by Jenny Colgan
Then she thought of her mother’s face – and, worse, her great-aunt Lilian’s – if they tried to slope off somewhere, and how her nieces would react to her retraction of the fiercely extracted promise that they could be bridesmaids (although Meridian, who was three and something of a tomboy, had made her agree that she could be a boy bridesmaid, and Rosie had decided to attempt something along the lines of kilts). Well, they would have to put on some sort of a do. But for now she was revelling in the very sense of it, of being newly affianced, of waking up every day next to the man she loved so much and still couldn’t quite believe was hers. Let the snow fall, she thought. Everything in its own time.
That, of course, was before she started throwing up in the sink.
Tina, on the other hand, was having so much fun selecting stationery, choosing flowers and colour schemes and favours, and censoring speeches. Her wedding would be held at the Hyacinth, the local fancy golf hotel that served overpriced non-ironic prawn cocktail and usually had groups of loud red-faced men propping up the corner of the bar and complaining about foreigners. She was having a sit-down dinner for a hundred in the main banqueting hall, with a black and white theme for the guests, a choreographed first dance (Rosie couldn’t imagine what her charming but straightforward fiancé Jake would think of that) and just about every girl in the village as a bridesmaid.
But Rosie did love twirling the beautiful ring around her finger (they’d had it resized to fit; it was extremely old and belonged to the slenderer fingers of an earlier age, or, Rosie imagined Stephen’s mother thought, a more refined breeding) and caressing the dull patina on the platinum, which could not dim the deep shine of the square-cut diamond in the centre, surrounded by the tiny emeralds, so fashionable in their day, that went with the colour of her eyes. It was by far and away the most valuable thing she had ever owned, and she was terrified of losing it. Stephen laughed when he saw her constantly fiddling with it.
‘It’s like you’ve never had any jewellery,’ he said, and Rosie had looked at him and blinked and said, well, no, she hadn’t, nurses weren’t really allowed to wear it, and he’d pulled her close and said he wanted to buy her all the jewellery in the world, and she reminded him that they didn’t have any money and he’d laughed and said, oh no, they didn’t, would fish and chips do for now, and she’d said, yes, that would be fine.
So even despite the odd spewing moment, it took Rosie a couple of months to notice that she was feeling a little peculiar most of the time. She assumed it was just excitement at the way their lives were going, and even then she was busy in the shop and assumed it was nothing, and she couldn’t possibly go to Malik’s shop – the local Spar, which sold everything – and buy a pregnancy test because it would be round the village at the speed of light and everyone already had more than enough interest in their lives together, thank you very much, so she’d have to wait to drive into Carningford, the nearest large town, AND she hadn’t mentioned it to Stephen in case he got unnecessarily worked up (proposing to her was, she sensed, probably enough of a gigantic upheaval in his life for one year).
It was late February when she snuck away one Monday morning, telling Tina she was going to check out some new Parma violets, and drove to Carningford at top speed. Then when she left the chemist’s, with shaking hands, she realised that she couldn’t wait after all and had to go to the horrible toilets in the shopping centre that were full of teenage girls shouting. She wondered how many people before her had done exactly the same thing, how many people had had their lives changed in this exact space simply because it was close to the chemist, and she looked at it and didn’t understand what it meant, and read the instructions again and still didn’t understand, and then finally accepted that there were two lines, clear as day, one straight, one a little wobbly; one was her and one was Stephen, and together they meant…
‘Oh my God,’ Rosie said, dropping down on to the loo seat. ‘Oh my God.’
In the next booth over, a couple of teenage girls were talking loudly in a strange accent that was half local, half an attempt at a kind of London slang.
‘So I says to him, awriight…’
Rosie fumbled for her phone and thought she was going to drop it straight down the loo. She wanted to wash her hands, but oh, she was here now, and what was she going to do anyway, she couldn’t call outside.
‘So I says to her, you backs off RAGHT NOW, innit…’
Stephen didn’t keep his phone on in class; she’d have to call the office. She tried to keep her voice steady when Carmel, the school secretary, answered, although it was considered very odd to call a teacher in the middle of the day.
‘You want Stephen? Is everything all right?’
Rosie thought again how, even though she didn’t miss London very often, she had rather enjoyed its anonymity.
‘Fine!’ she trilled. ‘All fine! Great, in fact! Just a little thing…’
‘Because you know it’s choir and he’s a bit busy…’
‘I’ll be two seconds,’ lied Rosie.
‘I’sa gonna duff you up,’ said the voice loudly from the next cubicle.
There was a silence.
‘I’ll just get him,’ said Carmel.
Rosie rolled her eyes, her heart hammering in her chest.
‘What’s up?’ said Stephen, when he finally got to the phone. ‘Carmel says you’re being duffed up!’
‘She NEVAH,’ came the voice.
‘Uh, no,’ said Rosie. A mucky toilet in a horrible going-downhill shopping centre with two screeching fifteen-year-olds – a reminder of what awaited them one day – wasn’t exactly how she’d dreamt of this moment.
‘Um, it’s something else.’
‘Good.’
‘So AH says, YOU UP THE DUFF?’
‘Who are you with?’ said Stephen.
Rosie closed her eyes.
‘Nobody. But listen…’
‘An’ SHE says, SO WHAT IF I AM, an I’m like, SLAG…’
‘I’m up the duff,’ said Rosie.
‘Wha’?’ said the girls next door.
‘Mr Lakeman, I need go toilet, please,’ came a small voice from Stephen’s end.
‘What?’ said Stephen, who thought that saying ‘pardon’ was common.
‘Um. Uh.’ Rosie realised she was about to burst into tears.
‘Um, yes,’ said Stephen desperately.
‘Yes?’
‘No, I’m talking to Clover Lumb. I mean, yes?’
‘UH,’ said Rosie. Her hand was shaking as she held up the little stick. ‘Yes. I mean. I think so. No. Definitely. Yes. YES.’
There was a long pause.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Stephen. ‘Miss Hopkins, you do not mess about.’
Rosie choked, half laughing, half crying.
‘Plus, I was rather under the impression that I’d already sealed the deal.’
‘That’s right, I did it all by myself.’
Stephen let out a short. barking laugh.
‘Oh Lord, I guess it was always going to happen sooner or later.’
‘I did tell you we should get central heating.’
‘This really is quite a lot sooner, though, isn’t it?’
For a moment Rosie forgot all about the horrible toilet, the fact that it was freezing, the obviously earwigging girls next door, the whole new world that had suddenly flung itself open in her face. Despite everything to come, it was, as it so often was, just her and Stephen, in their little bubble, just the two of them, while the rest of the world faded away to white noise.
‘BAD sooner?’
She could hear the warm smile in his voice, and everything around her suddenly became warmer too.
‘Lord, yes. Awful. You can tell my bloody mother.’
‘Well you can tell Lilian.’
They both thought for a second about Rosie’s beloved great-aunt.
‘No, we can tell her together,’ said Stephen eventually. ‘Anyway, order a lemonade in the Red Lion and it’ll be com
mon knowledge all over town in about fifteen seconds.’
The two girls were pretending to do their make-up at the counter when Rosie emerged from the cubicle, purple in the face. They looked at her shyly.
‘Uh, congratulations,’ said the first one, who had been the loudest. Her normal voice was back. Rosie couldn’t help smiling.
‘You guys are the only people who know,’ she said. ‘Whoa, that’s the weirdest thing.’
She breezed home again, hugging the secret close to her all day, letting it keep her warm in the cold. Stephen called again at lunchtime, reporting that he had done absolutely nothing useful with fractions but in the end had just got the children to practise their number bonds.
‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘How far gone are you? Do you need to sit down? Are you feeling sick?’
‘No,’ Rosie said, having vanished into the tiny back room of the sweetshop. It was little more than a sink and a kettle, and she never shut the door, but today she did. If Tina thought there was anything odd about that, she didn’t mention it. ‘I feel completely fine. Except, you know… OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!’
At the other end of the phone, Stephen nodded.
‘Also,’ he said cheerfully, ‘your knockers are probably going to get huge.’
Actually, they were feeling a bit swollen, Rosie realised. She’d put it down to post-Christmas over-indulgence, which, she realised, probably also explained a couple of nights when they weren’t as careful as they might have been.
‘Seriously, is that all you’re thinking about?’
‘That is the only thing I can think about that isn’t absolutely terrifying.’
‘Well you didn’t want Mr Dog… Oh my God, how are we going to break it to Mr Dog?’
‘I think your dog…’ Stephen hated the name Mr Dog and thought he should be called something sensible, like Archie or Rex, ‘could do with being reminded once in a while that he’s just an animal. I don’t think it will be bad for him at all.’
‘Hmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Oh Lord. The timing is awful. Goodness, this is all going to be awful.’
There was a pause. Stephen wanted to pull her into his arms and bury his face in her hair. He resisted the urge to run straight out of school and up the road.
‘Oh darling, do you really think that?’ he said instead.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m just panicking.’
‘Well it isn’t going to be awful. It’s going to be ours, and it will be wonderful, and full of love. And dental cavities.’
‘Ha,’ said Rosie. Then, quietly, ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ said Stephen. ‘Right, I have to go, there’s some kind of spilled milk catastrophe. Little buggers…’ he paused, ‘with whom I am soon going to have masses of tolerance and patience.’
Rosie smiled and put the phone down, then burst into tears. Come to think about it, she had been very emotional recently, but everyone had put that down to the engagement.
Okay. They would talk about it tonight, but the most important thing was not to tell people. When was it, twelve weeks you could mention it? Right. Well, she couldn’t be more than five or six, not really. She’d have to get online and check it out. But that meant they had lots of time to get used to it and calm down and start to prepare themselves and… Oh, to have Stephen’s baby! If it were a boy, would it be tall and handsome? And a bit moody? And if it was a girl, would his heart turn over? Would he collapse with joy and be madly in love with her and spoil her to bits?
Tina knocked on the door to come and wash up teacups and Rosie tried to pull herself together. Right. She was going to be calm, collected, professional. No one would suspect a thing, not until they’d got everything sorted out. It would be cool.
‘Hey,’ said Tina pleasantly. ‘You okay?’
‘I’M HAVING A BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’
